Nonfiction:
The Individual in the Animal Kingdom, 1912
Essays of a Biologist, 1923
Essays in Popular Science, 1926
The Stream of Life, 1926
Animal Biology, 1927, revised 1957 (with J. B. S. Haldane)
Religion Without Revelation, 1927, revised 1947
What Darwin Really Said, 1929
The Science of Life, 1929-1930 (3 volumes, with H. G. Wells and G. P. Wells)
Ants, 1930
Bird-Watching and Bird Behavior, 1930
Africa View, 1931
What Dare I Think?, 1931
Simple Science, 1931-1935 (4 volumes, with Edward Neville da Costa Andrade)
A Scientist Among the Soviets, 1932
Scientific Reason and Social Needs, 1934
If I Were Dictator, 1934
The Elements of Experimental Embryology, 1934 (with Gavin R. de Beer)
We Europeans, 1935 (with A. C. Hadden)
At the Zoo, 1936
The Living Thoughts of Darwin, 1939
The Uniqueness of Man, 1941
Democracy Marches, 1941
Reconstruction and Peace, 1942
Evolution: The Modern Synthesis, 1942, 2d revised edition 1963
Evolutionary Ethics, 1943
TVA: Adventure in Planning, 1943
UNESCO: Its Purpose and Its Philosophy, 1947
Touchstone for Ethics, 1893-1943, 1947
Man in the Modern World, 1947
Soviet Genetics and World Science, 1949
Evolution in Action, 1953
From an Antique Land, 1954, revised 1966
Kingdom of the Beasts, 1956
Biological Aspects of Cancer, 1957
New Bottles for New Wine, 1957
The Wonderful World of Life: The Story of Evolution, 1958
Conservation of Wild Life in Central and East Africa, 1961
Essays of a Humanist, 1963
The Human Crisis, 1963
Darwin and His World, 1965 (with H. B. D. Kettlewell)
The Wonderful World of Evolution, 1969
Memories, 1970-1973 (2 volumes)
Poetry:
The Captive Shrew, and Other Poems, 1932
Edited Texts:
T. H. Huxley’s Diary on the Rattlesnake, 1935
The New Systematics, 1940
Evolution as a Process, 1953
The Humanist Frame, 1961
Sir Julian Sorell Huxley was a leading voice of scientific humanism in the English-speaking world for more than forty years. Educated as a biologist and serving for many years as a professor of biology and zoology at American and British universities, he also addressed himself to the perplexing problem of science’s role in its social contexts. Although much of his published work is of a highly specialized scientific nature, he was also concerned with philosophical questions in numerous collections of essays.
Huxley’s family is notable for its high intellectual capacities and achievements. His father, Leonard Huxley, was both a noted educator and essayist, while his grandfather, Thomas Henry Huxley, was a famed scientist. Julian Huxley’s great-uncle was Matthew Arnold, the critic. The noted author Aldous Huxley was his brother, while his half brother, A. F. Huxley, won the 1963 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine.
Sir Julian Huxley was educated at Eton and Oxford Universities, and he began his career as a lecturer in zoology at Balliol College, Oxford, in 1911. After three years in the United States at Rice Institute (where he founded the Department of Biology), he returned to England in 1916 to serve in the British armed forces during World War I. Immediately after the war, he returned to Oxford, where he remained until 1925. It was during this period that he began his prolific publication of scientific and humanistic works. His ability to make complicated scientific concepts comprehensible to the layperson, and his frequent radio lectures, fostered growing public interest in scientific developments.
After 1926, Huxley became increasingly active in international scientific affairs. His visits to Africa, initially for the British Colonial Office, resulted in publications that describe scientific problems in connection with astute political and social observations. His firsthand analyses of Soviet science are temperate views of both the weaknesses and strengths of the Soviet Union’s system of scientific inquiry. As the first director of the United Nations Educational and Scientific Organization (UNESCO), he was responsible for that organization’s initial programs, and he is credited with making UNESCO a valuable agency of the United Nations.
Although he was often controversial–because of, among other things, his advocacy of eugenics to improve the human race and the atheism imputed to him–Huxley was a powerful force in keeping scientists aware of their humanistic obligations and in dispelling much of the mystery of the laboratory for the nonscientist.